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Michael Blum

Food as Sideshow

Michael's Kitchen is a showy new restaurant in downtown Hollywood where dinner is as much a spectacle as a food experience. Flames spout from stoves in the open kitchen, frying pans sizzle like lava eruptions, and chefs parade through the place with creatively displayed dishes. This is "Cirque de Soleil dining," says Michael Blum, co-owner (with his wife, Jennie) and namesake of the restaurant. The food? It just tastes good. But the presentation is, well, carnyesque.

Blum, the food showman, feels right at home in the lurid sideshows of county fairs and traveling carnivals. "I like the wow effect -- the 3,000-pound pig and the lady with the 14-inch nose. At the carnival, it's all about the wacky people. That's kind of how I go through my day. We give you in-your-face dining."

Best Indian Restaurant

Madras Café

The cuisine of India is perhaps the only in the world whose aftertaste is more seductive than its taste. Infused with cumin, cardamom, turmeric, chili powder, coriander, and jaggery, the menu at Madras Café, a quaint restaurant in an unassuming strip mall in Pompano Beach, features some of the most authentic South Indian dishes this side of the Atlantic Ocean. For carnivores, the clay oven-baked Tandoori chicken ($11.95) blends spices with equal kick and zing to accentuate tender, fall-off-the-bone chicken; then there's the traditional lamb vindaloo ($12.95), which uses a spicy sauce to complement chunks of lamb served over a bed of rice. Additionally, Indian cuisine is known for its vegetarian dishes, and here Madras Café does not disappoint. Among the highlight veggie dishes are the Navratan Korma ($9.95), a delicious blend of vegetables in a creamy cashew-and-almond sauce; saag panner ($9.95), a mixture of fresh spinach and homemade cottage cheese; and the time-honored aloo gobi ($9.95), a combination of cauliflower and potatoes cooked with ginger and tomatoes. What's more, for those wanting to sample a variety of Indian dishes, try the lunch buffet ($7.95 Monday to Friday 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., $9.95 Saturday and Sunday 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.) or the $11.95 dinner buffet Wednesday and Sunday from 6 to 10 p.m.

Best Cuban Restaurant

Señor Café

Cuban food is not complicated, nor is it generally gourmet fare. But it's spare, delicious in its simplicity, and, most important, fresh. Well, for all this you couldn't pick a better location than next door to a grocery store. And Senor Café, an ultraclean, well-lighted joint next to President Supermarket just south of downtown Hollywood, fits the bill perfectly. Our favorite dish here is boliche, Cuban pot roast ($6.95), a juicy cut of meat that will make you immediately forget that dried-up shoe leather your mom used to serve. It comes with two side dishes. For these, we recommend the moros y cristianos (white rice and black beans) and tostones (fried green plantains.) Indeed, the plantains here are some of the best on the planet -- pounded, then dumped into superhot oil so that the outside is crispy and the inside tender and moist. But the best way to eat at Señor Café if you're hungry is the lunch buffet ($6.99), which is served 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.. The menu changes every day, but a few things are for sure. Wednesdays, there will be lechon, perfect Cuban pork, and Friday is seafood day. It's all you can eat not only of the main dish but also of plantains, yucca, rice, and soup. To end your meal, what else but a perfect cup of coffee? Try the cafecito, a tiny sweetened cup that goes for a measly 53 cents. The place is open 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Sundays.

Best Haitian Restaurant

Chez Moy

Don't bother looking for menus in this down-to-earth neighborhood place. All its offerings are up on a mirrored wall, each dish spelled out in blue tape. But then, that might not even help you. "Do you speak French?" the owner recently queried a first-timer at Chez Moy. No, came the reply. "Well, then I'll just tell you what we have," she said with a thick Creole accent, listing off lunch items: chicken ($7), fish ($10), or goat ($8) in spicy sauces. Each comes with salad and rice. For those uninitiated in Haitian ways, the menus for lunch and dinner, which also include lamb and fried pork entrées, are identical in fare and price. Breakfasts are cheaper ($6 each), but don't expect eggs and toast. Haitians like to start their morning off with the likes of meat stew and salt fish. Open 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Best Caribbean Restaurant

Hope's

Audrey Hope doesn't have to fish for compliments. Her customers offer them generously enough, most likely through a mouthful of fried snapper or over a bowl of tilapia stew. Hope and daughters Lucretia and Jessica, who hail from British Guyana, serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner Caribbean-style in this tiny, eight-table restaurant that's in an area never known for its culinary highlights. Don't let the handmade curtains in the windows or the building façade fool you: You don't have to be a fancypants to turn out a mouthwatering chicken curry with a side of mac and cheese -- or to enjoy them either. The cooking skills Hope learned from her mother are put to excellent use on recipes ranging from Bahamian to Jamaican. A chalkboard printed with the day's specials usually advertises a lineup of items including tomato-based fish stew, a whole fresh-caught battered fish, a plate of crab, shrimp, or lobster tail ($8.99 to $14.99). Sides include enough red beans and rice to feed a battalion, a double dollop of potato salad, and a half head of iceberg with bottled dressing. After you polish off that last slice of clove-, cinnamon-, and nutmeg-flavored shortcake, don't mind if Audrey and her girls, chattering happily, walk you to your car. Where there's Hope, there's lots of life.

Best Jamaican Restaurant

Jerk Machine

We hate chain restaurants. Can't stand 'em. Not even Pollo Tropical escapes our wrath. But there's an exception to every rule, and it must be said that the septet of Jerk Machines not only breaks the mold; it chops it into teeny, tiny pieces. Founded in Lauderhill 16 years ago by islanders Desmond and Catherine Malcolm, Jerk Machine does several things so righteously that it'd be a shame to ignore its achievements. First and foremost, it gives scaredy-cat Anglos an opportunity to sample real Jamaican cooking without alienating its core constituency of native folks -- those who depend on the restaurants for fast, consistently excellent food that reminds them of home. Secondly, it remains a centerpiece of the downtown restaurant rows of Lauderhill, Miramar, and central Fort Lauderdale. Sit down, or get it to go. You can't deny that the Machine serves some superb pork jerk ($7.99 for a large plate with fixings) and chicken ($5.99 to $7.69). There's also succulent curry goat and oxtail, brown stew chicken that'll have you running back for more, escoviched fish, and crispy snapper. Plus, there are patties ($1.25 to $1.50), those hand-held pastries full of spicy goodness. Oh, and don't forget breakfast -- ackee and saltfish, of course; liver an' onions; calaloo; and mackerel. Authentic enough to run Kingston's own Island Grill out of Lauderhill in less than a year, this well-oiled Machine will jerk forever, Jah willing.

Best Salvadoran Restaurant

Atlakat

Brush up on your Spanish, gringo, because few people at Atlakat are likely to speak your tongue, except when it comes to the universal language of great homemade food. But if you can open a menu and point, you'll be well taken care of at Manuel Chavez's Salvadoran café. Make a stab at the Sampler Platter ($12.99): fried pupusas filled with jack cheese, curtido (a marinated cabbage and carrot slaw) grilled beef chunks, fried pork chicharrones, and pieces of yucca and fried plantain. Give it all a squirt of Cholula hot sauce or a dunk in your bowl of hot tomato salsa and you've got a meal. Er, well, actually you don't. El Salvador may be the smallest country in Central America, but its appetites are big. Witness those burly workmen polishing off plates of tamales and grilled chicken. Now take a deep breath and order yourself a monster bowl of seafood soup ($13.50) or the Atlakat Special ($11.95), a forearm's-length strip of grilled sirloin, a grilled breast of chicken, and four jumbo grilled shrimp. Granted, you won't be able to finish it, not with those sides of fried yucca, red beans, and rice, but your waitress probably understands the universal sign for "Much as I'd love to, I can't choke down another morsel." (Point finger at unfinished plate, then at belly straining shirt buttons. Shake head wistfully.)

Best Mexican Restaurant

Tacos al Carbón

Blather all you want about authentic Mexican food, but how do you know it? The old lady in the kitchen pressing tortillas? The "secret" spice recipe? Maybe it's a menu that unabashedly sells tongue burritos ($3.50), tripe soup ($6), pork skin tacos ($1.50), and shrimp/octopus cocktails ($7.99). You could count the number of Mexican families crammed into a tiny room on any given Friday night or point to the queue of exhausted migrant workers lined up at the taco truck in the parking lot. The average price of a meal hovers around $5; the place is lavishly decorated with glittery streamers and balloons for every single holiday, from Valentine's to St. Paddy's to Cinco de Mayo. The mariachi and norteña music blaring at eardrum-splitting decibels could be the dead giveaway. Some might argue that you really know "authentic" when you can drive up to the to-go window at 4:45 a.m., seven days a week, and come away with a carton of spicy pork tacos ($1.50 each) that will satisfy any longing you're suffering at that blasted hour.

Tacos Al Carbon nails each and every one of those. But what really sets this moving-and-shaking, ever-evolving little goldmine apart from the corporate taco mongers is that nothing ever tastes the same twice. You may get a green sauce with your taco de chicharron that will peel the roof off your mouth. Then again, that taco might come with a cool tomato salsa bursting with cilantro and onion. A basket of corn tortillas, puffed and warm straight from the fryer, might arrive at the table at no charge, or then again, no dice. Your "veggie" burrito ($2.99) could have just about anything in it that can't be slaughtered and thrown on a grill. And then there's that mysterious menu item described as "other kind of meat..."

Best Inexpensive Italian Restaurant

Salerno's

Those of us who have taken to barking incessantly about the insulting lack of quality in everything these days -- the DVD player that skips whole movie scenes first time you plug it in, stylish steak knives that break off in your T-bone -- will cherish Salerno's for every drop of its home-made, carefully tended red sauce, its freshly made gnocchi, tortellini, and spinach fettuccini, its imported provolone and mozzarella. Sing arias of grazie to Tony Salerno for being a decent guy who couldn't live with himself if he charged more than $3.25 for a delicious bowl of Italian wedding soup. A hot sausage and pepper sub, supersized, can be had for $6.50 here, and you know when you get it home and peel off its greasy wrapper, it's going to taste better than you dreamed possible. A plate of rigatoni, served with a salad and dripping garlic rolls, will fill your belly without emptying your wallet. The only surprises here are good ones, like a shrimp, scallop, and bacon pizza (at $27.95, the most expensive pie on the list). And the only secrets have been passed down through generations of Italian cooks. Pass them on.

Best Expensive Italian

Paradiso Ristorante

Short of booking a flight to Italy's Amalfi coast, you're not going to find a whole bunch of restaurants where the waiters address you as madam, whip out plates of char-grilled calamari on shredded artichoke and arugula salad, uncork your wine with a flourish of white linen, appear with glasses of chilled, homemade limoncello, and prevail upon you with samples of biscotti. That such a place exists in backward bumpkin Lake Worth, where nothing happens but a lot of bickering over whether to sell a parking lot, is, frankly, surreal. And if things weren't mysterious and melancholy enough, when was the last time you saw a $38 piece of fish on a menu? My dear, you've stepped into the zone; relax and enjoy it. And if you can't find somebody to pay for your pleasure, Paradiso's $48 prix fixe menu, served nightly, is an epic five-course bargain, if for nothing else than the opportunity to bask in the glow of so much masculine pulchritude, all of it dressed in snappy black suits and silk ties and sporting Mediterranean accents. From the first course of eight little bites of bliss -- tuna tartare, grilled eggplant, mozzarella di bufala, among others -- through the pastas and mushroom risotto, the grouper Livornese, the venison in balsamic reduction, to the perfect little plate of sweets and your limoncello cream, you know they weren't kidding around when they named this place Paradiso.

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